It’s been a season of unravelling identities. Picking apart the personas we assumed we knew, and understanding the ways they came to be. Perhaps it’s the news cycle, perhaps it’s coincidence, but almost annually, as we strip off our clothes and step into a glaring sun, so too do we adopt new perspectives in a new light. 
 
The advent of the ego – how one assesses themselves, their self-esteem, their place in the world – and the alternative of it – has always been a focal point in culture, but a rebirth of the figures we once assumed to “know” is breaking waves, rippling across the world.  
 
Take Pamela Anderson, who up until now, had her image constructed and dissected by public opinion. Beyond her platinum mane and red bathing suit, the actor and activist remained suffocated to sex and scandal for the majority of her career. That was, until the release of her memoir and documentary Love, Pamela and Pamela, A Love Story.  

The once infamous Playboy centrefold offered a holistic portrait of herself, from motherhood to love to political action, inserting pages to a narrative of her unseen before – and for once, in her own words. To audiences, it appeared to be an alter-ego, a proxy look at Pamela, but to her it was the most realistic image of her documented to date. Clips in the documentary feature her as the glamourised butt of a joke on stale late-night TV hosts and the subject of an adult film search. Stripped raw, bare-faced, she annotates the curated portrait of herself. 
 
The re-imagining of pop culture icons often challenges us who find comfort in categorising an individual – no matter how inaccurate it may be – to delve beneath the shallow, surface-level of a character, and our own expectations. 
 
We’re existing in an age where a public image, be it memorialised in magazines, films and interviews, or documented on social media, seems to form more of the ego – the self – while everything that presents outside of that becomes the alter. 
 
Paris Hilton is another example that springs to mind. The businesswoman and reality star famed for the phrase “that’s hot” was reduced to a wardrobe of pink velour, six inch stilettos and a party girl persona. She would shock fans and critics alike when her high-pitched bimbo façade faded in the documentary This Is Paris, revealing both her real voice, and a series of shocking experiences that constructed her life early on. 
 
In another way, Rihanna’s anti-hero image has captivated audiences, with a no frills approach to the pop culture stereotype; she’s constructed a career by refusing to blend into the mould of hyper-curated female artists, denied sanitising her songs for a global ‘family-friendly’ event in her Superbowl performance.